Artemis II just made a historic loop around the moon

HOUSTON — After five days in space and five decades of waiting, astronauts just got a view of the moon unlike any other.

The Artemis II mission’s Orion spacecraft looped around the farside of the moon on April 6. This lunar flyby lasted roughly seven hours. The sun lit up only about a fifth of the moon’s farside during that time. Yet the Artemis II crew got front-row seats to parts of the moon that have barely been glimpsed before by human eyes.

The crew includes four astronauts. Three work for NASA: Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman. The fourth, Jeremy Hansen, works for the Canadian Space Agency. On April 1, the team lifted off for a 10-day round trip to the moon. Their close encounter with the lunar farside lasted only a few hours. They spent that entire time furiously collecting scientific data.

To the farside!

The nearside of the moon is an old friend. It always faces Earth. All Apollo missions landed there. The lunar farside is more mysterious. It has more craters and the chemistry of its rocks is different. Only a few spacecraft have ever landed there.

As the Orion capsule passed behind the moon, its crew took photos. They also recorded themselves making observations aloud.

The moon has been thoroughly photographed by robots. But people can pick up details in color and texture that cameras can’t. (If you’ve ever tried to snap a photo of the moon on your phone, you know it looks better in person.) The Artemis II astronauts could see browns and greens where cameras picked up only grays. Some of their descriptions were downright poetic.

A camera on the Orion spacecraft captured this view of the crescent moon and the crescent Earth behind it. As the crew passed from the nearside to the farside of the moon, mission specialist Christina Koch noted how much brighter Earth looked than the moon, despite being so much farther away.NASA

Koch remarked on “all the really bright new craters” on the moon. “Most of them are pretty small,” she said. “What it looks like is a lampshade with pinprick holes and light shining through. They are so bright compared to the rest of the moon.”

Glover was struck by the terminator. That’s the line between the moon’s dark and light sides. “There are little islands of terrain out there that are completely surrounded by darkness,” he said. “To the north, there’s a really nice double crater. It looks like a snowman. On the southern edge it looks like there’s a gigantic hole.”

Loss of contact

About four hours into the flyby, the Orion capsule passed fully behind the moon (relative to Earth). As a result, for about 40 minutes no signals could be sent to or received from the spacecraft.

During that time, the capsule made its closest approach to the moon. It flew just 6,545 kilometers (4,067 miles) above the lunar surface. Minutes later, the astronauts reached their farthest point from Earth, setting a new record.

Until now, the Apollo 13 crew has held the record for humans’ farthest venture from Earth. In 1970, that mission took them some 400,171 kilometers (248,655 miles) into space. The Artemis II crew ventured about 6,600 kilometers (4,100 miles) farther.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft carrying the four Artemis II astronauts snapped this selfie as it hurtled toward the moon. During their lunar flyby, the crew broke the record for farthest humans have traveled from Earth.NASA

An epic eclipse

The moon wasn’t the only thing the Artemis II astronauts had in their sights. They also got a unique view of the sun. As their capsule headed back toward Earth, they pointed it so that the moon blocked the sun. This created a total solar eclipse.

The crew became the first humans to ever see an eclipse from the moon. And it brought the sun’s wispy outer corona into view. “It’s bright and it creates a halo almost around the entire moon,” Glover said.

The side of the moon facing Earth was also lit up by earthshine — sunlight reflected off our planet’s surface. “Earth is so bright out there and the moon is just hanging in front of us, this black orb,” Glover said. “It creates quite an impressive visual illusion. Wow.”

At the end of their flyby, the Artemis II saw the moon eclipse the sun. The sun’s corona created a glowing halo around the dark disk of the moon, as seen in this photo. NASA

Bathed in earthshine, much of the moon’s surface was actually visible during the eclipse, Glover said. “We just went sci-fi,” he added. “It just looks unreal.”

During this period, the astronauts watched the shadowed part of the moon for impact flashes. These short-lived spikes of light can be seen as space rocks hit dark parts of the moon.

Scientists weren’t sure if the astronauts would see any flashes from lunar meteorites, but the team reported they saw at least four!

Here, NASA science officers Angela Garcia (left) and Kelsey Young react to hearing the astronauts describe impact flashes on the nearside of the moon.NASA

After the solar eclipse, the lunar flyby came to an end. But analyzing the astronauts’ trove of data has just begun. The crew bore witness to moments that will have a lasting impact on science — and on the astronauts.

“At one point … I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon,” Koch said during the flyby. “It lasted just a second or two, and I actually couldn’t even make it happen again. But something just drew me in suddenly to the lunar landscape, and it became real.”

“The moon really is its own unique body in the universe,” Koch continued. “It’s not just a poster in the sky that goes by. It is a real place. And when we have that perspective and we compare it to our home of the Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common. Everything we need, the Earth provides. And that truly is somewhat of a miracle.”